The family love a roast, but this evening we were late starting to cook so it was a good thing the lamb was off the bone which meant it took about 15 minutes to cook rather than the hour you'd usually need.

Still I'm not fantastic at cutting corners just yet so when I started on the marinade - taken from the Casa Moro cookbook - I thought I wouldn't be likely to get the kids into bed on time.

Combine all the ingredients for the marinade except the oil and rub all over the lamb. After a few minutes add the oil, this pause before adding the oil is supposed to allow the lemon juice to get into the meat. Let the marinade do it's magic for as long as you can - in my case about 20 out of the recommended 30 minutes - occasionally turning the meat.

Meanwhile prepare and par-boil your root vegetables for about 10 minutes before draining them and then putting them in a roasting tray with a little oil and then into a pre-heated oven for 45 minutes at 200C. On this occasion I did 2 potatoes, a sweet potato, the half an onion that didn't go into the marinade, and a few carrots. Boiling the potatoes gives the finished potatoes a really fluffy and crispy finish.

Back to the lamb. Seal the meat over a hot hob in a roasting tin and then put it into the oven for 15 minutes. I've now learnt to make sure I give enough time for the meat to rest for about 10 minutes while the rest of the meal is in its final preparation stages.

So, once the meat came out (and was wrapped in tin foil to make sure it didn't loose heat) I put on the green vegetables.

It all got served within an hour and a quarter of starting, which doesn't make this the fastest of fast meals, but it went down well and I got the sort of praise that is compatible with this sort of effort.

I'd originally intended on slow roasting this lamb shoulder, but ran out of time for doing it properly, so quick roasted it, instead.

I didn't have any string to tie it, unfortunately, so the shoulder split open during the introductory high-heat "searing" part of the roasting, which made timing the cooking for any kind of pinkness difficult.

But, while the roast came out more "done" than I wanted (okay, entirely "done"), it was still incredibly tender and flavorful.

But now I know better than to not have any string in the house for tying up roasts.

The lamb shoulder was accompanied by steamed herbed potatoes and sauteed kale. I also made my own biscuits, but I'm not picturing them here as it was my very first biscuit making attempt . . . and they were less than entirely successful.

Still recognizable as dinner biscuits, but not worth picturing. I think I have several more biscuit attempts ahead of me before I can happily show them off.